


Heavenly Bodies

by RunawayCaboose



Category: Sing Street (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - The X-Files, Cryptozoology, Discussion of Paranormal Activity, Gen, The X-Files - Freeform, sort of, takes place in America, theoretical physics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-09
Updated: 2017-04-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 23:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10581933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunawayCaboose/pseuds/RunawayCaboose
Summary: College is a weird and unsettling place. Conor isn't sure if that's just how all colleges are or just his college, but he honestly doesn't really care at this point. He mostly avoids all of the strange happenings at his college, keeps to himself and his best friend, Darren. And then he attends a club meeting in Lecture Hall C-9 and gets introduced to a world he never paid much attention to before by a kid who seems to know too much for his own good.





	

There’s always something weird going on at colleges. Conor would honestly be convinced that colleges existed on a separate plane of being that just barely overlapped with the real one that their reality exists on, except he doesn’t actually believe in that whole nonsense. But he always hears stories about the weird shit that goes down in a place where a bunch of twenty-something year olds gather together to try and learn so they can get by in the capitalist society that is the world they live in. Conor theorizes that that’s part of the reason why all these stories spring up, it’s just overworked kids making things up or kids that haven’t slept in thirty-six hours with their blood full of coffee and Redbull that are totally convinced they saw Mothman vaping behind the 7-11 that’s just off campus. Conor hears things from transfer students who swear on their textbooks (they’re worth more than Bibles when you’re a broke college kid) that their dorm was wanted and the ghost totally tried to bang them, or tell Conor that their was a student who never left the library and you’d see her in their every time you were there and no one knew who she was but she looked a lot like a girl in a picture from the 1940’s that was hanging in the stairwell, or the kid who swore that the cafeteria was watched by some huge things with wings that hung upside down like a bat from the roof, but was only visible on Thursdays when the frozen yogurt machine was broken. 

Conor’s own college had stories too, and there was one that stood out to everybody, one that was known by everybody, one that was believed by everybody. The story wasn’t necessarily as outlandish as seeing Mothman blow a passionfruit scented cloud of smoke from its mouth and it didn’t talk about the sighting of aliens above the college or anything like that, but it had proof. Cold, hard, undeniable, walking, talking proof.

The story goes that there’s a kid, a student (actually a student, not like the girl in the library at some west coast university), and he’s a hardcore believer in ghosts and aliens and cryptids and the like. He doesn’t talk to people, not usually, but that might just be because people avoid him. They part like the Red Sea whenever he walks through the halls, Conor has seen it happen. People say that the second day of the first semester of the first year this kid was there, posters started appearing everywhere. Posters with words on them that were either done in very neat and uniform handwriting or in a font that no graphic design major had ever seen before. Posters that read ‘ _ Cryptozoology: Discussion and Dissection of Theories About Cryptids. Meetings Every Wednesday Night In Lecture Hall C-9 _ ’. And no one ever went to these meetings because, well, why would they? It was kind of strange, after all.

People told stories about the kid who ran the meetings, though. They’d walk past Lecture Hall C-9 and hear him in the room, talking to himself about the physical qualities of super dense matter or the infinite probability of a true nothing ever existing. Some guy once told Conor that he was on the roof making out with his girlfriend and the kid showed up out of nowhere and when asked what he was doing, replied ‘Oh, just looking at the sky for signs of life. Don’t worry, you’re not bothering me’.

The kid is Conor’s college’s very own urban legend, he’s their very own ghost that tries to bang people in their dorms except that no one ever hangs out with him so he probably has very few chances to bang people. Plus, he’s not even an urban legend because he’s real, he is definitely a person that Conor has seen before and has walked by before and he doesn’t believe all this hype around this random kid.

Except he buys into the hype, he totally does, and he starts believing the stories that people tell and he becomes one of the people in the crowds that press themselves to the wall whenever the kid walks by. Granted, it’s kind of hard to stay away from a story, and maybe a whole subcurrent of culture, that gave the kid the nickname of Spooky Eamon. 

Darren is telling Conor some story about Spooky Eamon, something about how we went to a gas station and picked up three separate packs of peanuts before putting them back down and leaving.

“I can’t believe you’ve never got any Spooky stories.” Darren sighs, shaking his head. “Don’t you two know each other or something?”

“Or something.” Conor agrees. “We’ve literally never talked.”

“What? But you’re Irish, I thought you two were pals or the like or whatever.” Darren says, like that explains everything. Conor studies Darren’s face for a few seconds.

“Darren.” Conor starts off, voice carefully level. “Darren, not all Irish people know each other. Darren, you’re Irish and you don’t know him. Darren, Darren, do you know that you’re Irish, Darren?”

“Of course I know, listen to my fucking accent.” Darren waves a hand at Conor. “I just thought that maybe you two had bonded over being Irish, I don’t know, leave me alone.” Conor smirks, content. 

“I’m sorry, Darren, but I’m going to have to check and see if you’re really truly Irish by asking you a series of questions about Irish history.” Conor jokes and Darren groans, burying his head in his hands. “So, first of all, what did Saint Patrick drive from Ireland?”

“Snakes.” Darren answers, quickly. “But apparently not all of them because he left you there, you fucking reptile.” Conor laughs.

“Okay, so you’re definitely Irish.” Conor concludes. “You get a stamp on your visa or something, I don’t know, I didn’t expect you to pass the test.”

“That was one question, Conor, how was that a test?” Darren asks, looking up from behind his hands.

“You insulted me.” Conor says, he’s picked up Darren’s tendency to say strange things like they explain everything and hold the answers to every question that has ever been asked. “With a completely original insult. I’d say that’s a pretty Irish thing, wouldn’t you?” Darren shrugs. “Also, your accent, it’s so thick that you couldn’t possibly be faking it.”

“I’m going to punch you.” Darren claps his hands together. “Right’o, Conor, if I’m so Irish and all, why don’t I show you how the Irish fight? By punching you.”

“Darren, that’s fighting like someone who’s drunk and Irish, I’ll show you fighting like someone who’s sober and Irish.” Conor stands up from the table, cracking his knuckles.

“Oh, yeah?” Darren stands too, trying really hard to be threatening, but his height kind of stops him from actually looking like he could hurt anyone. “And what does that look like?”

“Well, I’ll show you.” Conor nods and then takes off running as fast as he can in the opposite direction of Darren. 

After that, Darren continues to ask Conor if he’s got any new Spooky stories and he manages to convince some people that, yes, Spooky does have friends and Conor really is his best friend. Conor would be more upset, but he knows that it’s revenge for the end of their chase when Conor climbed up a fire escape ladder that was pulled up too high for Darren to reach. 

Conor is walking through the English wing one day, focusing more on the strange tiles on the floor than anything else when he hears someone’s voice drifting through the hallway. It’s after class hours and Conor is kind of confused, why would anyone be here after six? Conor walks down the hallway that he thinks the voice is coming from and he gets to the room. Lecture Hall C-9. He peers inside the open door and sees Spooky with his back turned, writing something in expo marker on the whiteboard. He’s saying something to himself, talking very quickly about the theory of relativity and motion and dense atoms and he says the word ‘hypothetically’ a lot.

Conor stand there for about five minutes, just watching Spooky’s scribbling quickly expand and take over the blank board space. He crosses an x and turns around, making eye contact with Conor and seeming to register his presence for the first time. And then he almost falls over, barely catching himself on the edge of the podium. They look at each other for more than a few seconds of awkward silence. 

“You’re real, right?” Spooky asks, looking straight at Conor and Conor suddenly realizes that he’s not sure if he’s seen the other blink yet.

“I think so.” Conor offers, shrugging. “Like, I think I’m real, but I might not be, I guess. But to myself? Yeah, I’m real. Are you?” 

“That’s up in the air right now.” Spooky shrugs. There are a few more beats of silence. “Are you, like… Lost or something? Do you need directions?”

“No, no, I could hear you talking and I wanted to come check out what you were doing. That’s a pretty impressive equation.” Conor gestures at the marked up boards lining the walls. “What’s it for?”

“It’s nothing special.” Spooky pushes his glasses up with the back of his hand. “It’s just a way that I’d be able to tell if a non-corporeal entity was around based on the light refraction and reflection of their bodies, which I’m assuming have to be incredibly dense if they can stay on this plan in forms such as theirs.”

“So, it’s a formula for finding ghosts?” Conor asks, surprised. 

“I mean, yeah, you could put it that way, I guess.” Spooky says, glancing over his shoulder at his work. “That’s the basic purpose of it.”

“Are you like, a physics or math major or something because that looks  _ heavy _ .” Conor takes a few steps forward, he’s fully in the room now. “You use Q’s, I’ve never seen someone use Q’s in equations before, what do they even stand for?”

“Actually, I’m studying history, I just like math.” He sounds kind of embarrassed to admit it. “And the Q’s stand for the theoretical waves that are emanated from the non-corpo- the ghost, sorry, from the ghost. We aren’t able to detect them with any of the technology we have now, but there has to be something there, otherwise something is really, really off with Newton’s calculations.”

“I’m sorry, did you say Newton’s calculations? Like, discoverer of gravity man got something wrong?” Conor is incredibly sure that he heard correctly, but he has to double check. Just in case.

“Yeah, his, uh, hypothetically, gravity should exert a force on everything, but all historically kept records go to show that ghosts defy this and art usually depicts them as being suspended or floating, so either they’re on a separate yet overlapping plane, which is kind of doubtful for a handful of other reasons, or they emit something that keeps gravity from working, like extremely fine particle waves.” Eamon says, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about and he says these lines like they’re rehearsed and like the explain everything. Maybe that’s just an Irish thing, then. 

“Why is the planes thing doubtful?” Conor questions, he’s kind of amazed at all of the information he was just told and how absolutely ludicrous it all was.

“I mean, that’s… That is pretty high-level stuff and it’s kind of hard to explain and it takes a long time, but I can do it next week if you want to come back?” Spooky offers and he sounds so hopeful.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” Conor shrugs, he has no prior commitments. 

“That’s so cool!” Spooky says and he sounds so excited, but then he clears his throat, pushes his glasses back up. He’s making an obvious effort to keep his composure. “So, you are…?”

“I’m Conor.” Conor introduces himself. “And you’re-”

“Spooky.” The other interrupts with a single, dry word. Conor winces because now that he thinks about it, that’s not exactly a kind nickname to give someone. “Spooky Eamon, but you can just call me Eamon. This is the cryptozoology club. Well, if you can call something with one member a club. I don’t think you can, but moving on. I don’t actually have any business to go through. I’m not sure if you can tell, but this is the first time someone else has been at one of these meetings with me.” Eamon looks at Conor and Conor shifts uncomfortably under his stare. “You’re a skeptic. You don’t believe in any of this.”

“I mean, it’s a little farfetched.” Conor admits. “Don’t get me wrong, your science and logic sounds incredible, but… There’s not enough verifiable evidence for me to believe in anything like this.” There are a few more seconds of silence, maybe that’s an Irish thing too, and Conor gets the feeling that maybe he upset Eamon. “I’m sorry. I don’t have to come back next week if you don’t want me to.”

“Of course you can come back.” Eamon sounds surprised. “Everyone starts as a skeptic, it’s normal, even I did. If everyone believed, there’d kind of be no point, wouldn’t there? All of this would just be seen as run of the mill, there’d be no reason to be investigating it. Besides, if you really want to believe, you’ll find a way.”

“You said that you were a skeptic?” Conor asks, reusing the tactic of repeating words he knows he understood for emphasis. 

“Yeah.” Eamon shrugs. “Not a big deal, really.”

“So you went from a non-believer to a fanatic?” Conor knows that he understands this, but it’s just so strange to think of Eamon not believing in anything strange. 

“I wouldn’t say I’m a fanatic.” Eamon pushes his glasses up. Conor realizes that Eamon is a kid straight out of an 80’s movie, with the loose glasses and the denim jacket and the obsession with aliens. He could totally be one of the characters from E.T. that’s not E.T.. Well, maybe he could be E.T., he does have really long fingers. “But it was definitely a process to get to where I am now.”

“Cool, cool.” Conor nods, looking down at the books in his arms before looking back up. “I’m actually going to have to go now, I never really meant to stay and I’ve got a paper to work on, so I’ll see you around, yeah?”

“Fine with me. If you ever want to get my attention, just stand in the middle of the hallway when I walk by, I’ll notice you.” Eamon jokes, but it’s just kind of awkward and Conor stands there, unsure whether or not he can leave. “You’d really… Stand out of the crowd.” Conor’s soul is withering and dying inside of him, he’s sure of it, he can’t believe he bought into the stupid hype around this nice kid who just wants to talk about ghosts and math. Jesus, he’s a horrible person, isn’t he? “Wow, my jokes really aren’t landing today, are they?”

“Maybe they too emit really fine particle waves.” Conor responds, hoping to lighten the mood and distract himself from thinking too much about what a horrible person he is. 

“That is- That is, by far, the worst thing I have ever heard, oh my God, please leave now.” Eamon buries his face in his hands, groaning. Conor laughs.

“Okay, okay, I’m going, but I’ll be back next week.” Conor promises, turning on his heel and walking back out of the door. He clutches his books closer to his chest and he can just hear something echoing through the halls when he reaches the final set of doors leading out of the building. Conor wonders briefly if Eamon is working on his equation again. 

Conor is sitting next to Darren in the cafeteria the next day, their bags on the floor next to their feet. Darren elbows Conor, gesturing to the far side of the cafeteria where Conor can just make out Eamon, pressed up to the wall as he tries to skirt the edges of the crowd. The cafeteria is the only place that people don’t actively try to avoid him.

“You get any Spooky stories yet?” Darren asks, grinning slyly. It’s clear he doesn’t expect anything and Conor barely keeps a smile from sneaking onto his face.

“Yeah, I do.” Conor says, to Darren’s surprise. He cups his hands around his mouth and calls out, “Hey! Eamon! Come eat with us!” Eamon looks around, surprised, until he sees Conor beckoning him over. He picks his way carefully over to the two of them, setting his tray down. “Darren, Eamon. Eamon, Darren. Oh, but, Darren, you already know him, don’t you?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.” Eamon shakes his head, standing awkwardly until Conor pushes a chair out from underneath the table with his foot. Eamon sits down, looking at Darren warily, but Darren is looking at him rather oddly too. “Should I?”

“No, no.” Conor reassures him, quickly. “Darren just thinks that everyone who’s Irish knows each other, even though he’s Irish and doesn’t know every Irish person.”

“Hey, I was right about you two, wasn’t I?” Darren defends himself, pointing between the other two. “You obviously know each other!”

“Actually, we just met last night.” Conor smirks at Darren. “I went to one of the club meetings.” Darren looks at Conor strangely. “It was really fun.”

“Sure.” Darren seems bewildered. Conor has succeeded in making him very unsettled. “So, uh, Eamon, was it?” Eamon nods. “You, uh, are you a vegetarian?”

“What?” Eamon asks in response, the question really did come out of the blue.

“Look, mate,” Darren leans slightly across the table, “I know fuck all about aliens and the Jersey Devil and the like and I’m sure you’re a multi-faceted person because Conor only befriends cool people, I mean, look who you’re talking to. I’m just trying to find some common ground here, humour me or whatever.”

“Yeah, I am a vegetarian, then.” Eamon admits, picking up a french fry from his plate. Darren sighs.

“Well, at least you don’t eat your fries with a fork. I guess that makes up for it.” Darren sighs again, like Eamon physically wounded him by not eating meat.

“Thank you?” Eamon just sounds confused, eyebrows furrowed and glasses slipping down his nose. Maybe being confused isn’t an Irish thing, maybe it’s a Darren thing and an interacting with Darren thing. “Should I be thanking you for this? I’m not quite sure what’s going on, honestly.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Conor advises, patting Darren’s shoulder. “Darren’s just disagreeable with everyone. It’s because he’s short, you know.”

“Conor.” Darren says, voice sickly sweet. “I can’t wait until I have the chance to push you off of a God damn bridge.” Conor just laughs and ruffles Darren’s hair. Eamon still looks confused, slowly biting into another fry. 

Conor does attend the next cryptozoology club meeting and Eamon has a cup of coffee waiting for him when he gets to Lecture Hall C-9 and, honestly, it’s very sweet. The gesture, not the coffee, the coffee is adequately sweetened. Just like Eamon promised, he starts talking about the holes in the overlapping planes theory almost as soon as they sit down. He explains, very carefully, saying ghost instead of non-corporeal entity or whatever complicated nonsense he had said last week. Eamon tells Conor, making large gestures with his hands, that there are accounts of ghosts interacting with this plane. Conor has to break it to him that that answers absolutely no questions. Eamon elaborates, says something about the power needed to interact across planes and how it’s so great and it would do  _ something _ . He really stresses the word something and Conor isn’t sure why.

And somehow, three hours have passed and Eamon is no longer sitting in his chair, he’s instead standing at the white boards, drawing cartoonish ghosts with a lot of squiggly lines coming off of them, Conor assumes that the lines represent the particle waves. Conor has drunk both of their coffees, but he’s pretty sure Eamon’s had Redbull or Monster or something like that in it because Conor’s blood is buzzing with caffeine. He’s honestly not sure how Eamon is still alive if he drinks this regularly. Eamon winds down eventually, once the three hours have passed, saying, “And that’s why we’re not ghosts and why ghosts don’t exist on different planes and why Newton was wrong, he was so wrong, I hope he knows that.”

“He’s dead, Eamon.” Conor has to point out.

“Conor.” Eamon says, slowly. “I just spent three hours explaining to you how ghosts work. Do you want to rethink that statement, maybe?” 

Conor comes to the meeting the next week and Eamon tries desperately to convince him that yes, of course Bigfoot is real. And he’s there the next week when Eamon loses track of his thoughts and just starts going off about Galileo and Newton, Conor has never known someone to hate scientists so much. Conor’s there the next week too when Eamon starts talking about the probability of there being life somewhere else in the universe and he actually starts writing calculations on the white boards and, wow, he really does love math. 

They start hanging out between the club meetings too, but can it really be called a club if it only has two members? Eamon starts sitting with Darren and Conor regularly and Conor’s friends find common ground through 80’s movies and music and making fun of Conor. Making fun of Conor actually takes up a large part of their conversations and Conor has to admit, it sucks being outnumbered even if the people outnumbering him would only be his height if Darren sat on Eamon’s shoulders. Conor has a bruise where Darren punched him after saying that, but it was well worth it. 

You know, Conor would actually go so far as to describe them as friends. 

It starts getting colder and Conor gets to see Eamon’s fashion evolve from t-shirts under denim jackets to the strangest sweaters under denim jackets, or sometimes he forgoes the denim jackets all together and just wears a sweater. Eamon has his own fashion and Conor has to admit, he looks very cute when his hair is tucked up underneath a beanie. 

And then it happens, they’re sitting in Lecture Hall C-9 and Eamon’s proposed talking point of the Nightcrawler has fallen to the side in favour of small talk. 

“Mid-terms are soon.” Conor points out and Eamon groans. “Eamon, what are you on about? You don’t have to study at all, you’ve shown me your tests, you star student.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t like to study for reassurance.” Eamon counters and Conor needs, conceding. “I always forget about midterms honestly, I hate them so much… I mean, I don’t hate them, but I definitely dislike them.”

“You’re going to ace them.” Conor sighs, running a hand through his hair, effectively disheveling it. “Me, on the other hand… I’m not even in my refined studies yet, it’s all basic stuff. I still need to study so much. Where’s your best pal Mothman when I need him to fly me away from this place?”

“I’ve heard the 7-11.” Eamon says. “But, honestly, I don’t believe that. Do you want to, like, come over to my apartment this weekend? It’s really nothing special, but we could study together, if you want to.”

“Dude, I’d love that, thank you so much. Studying is so much easier when you’re around other people.” Conor stretches, arms raised above his head, he’s been sitting for so long, but it’s not like he’s going to move.

“Seems kind of counterintuitive.” Eamon laughs, but he pulls a piece of paper and a pen from his pocket, scribbling down what Conor assumes to be his address. He presses it into Conor’s hand. “So, Friday? At four and we can order take out or a pizza or something.” Conor nods and Eamon nods back. “Cool, okay, I am going to go now, I’ll see you then, stay safe goodbye.” Eamon practically runs out of the door and Conor sits in the room for a few moments afterward, realizing that Eamon has never been the first one to leave until now.        

Conor shows up to Eamon’s apartment at four, just like Eamon told him, He has his books in a messenger bag and he’s sure that if he wears it for too long, it’ll start to compress his spine, it’s so heavy. Conor stands outside of Eamon’s door for a few seconds before knocking on it. It’s opened almost immediately by Eamon and Conor has to wonder if he was waiting just inside the door. Probably not. 

“Hi.” Eamon greets Conor, smile playing on his lips. “Please, come in.” He steps back so Conor can step forward and he closes the door. 

“You aren’t wearing your glasses.” Conor points out, noting the lack of frames on Eamon’s face, he’s never seen Eamon without them. “Can you see without them?”

“Definitely not.” Eamon laughs, stepping carefully past Conor. “I’m pretty blind, honestly, but I know my way around the apartment pretty we-” Eamon lurches forward, slipping in his sock-clad feet and barely catching himself on Conor’s arm. He stands unsteadily, leaning heavily on Conor. “Yeah, I need my glasses. Do you want to grab them for me? They’re on the counter.”

“Sure.” Conor chuckles, taking his arm from Eamon’s grip. “Can you stand alright?” Eamon nods. Conor steps into the kitchen, quickly finding Eamon’s glasses and bringing them back to him.

“Thanks.” Eamon takes his glasses from Conor’s hands and puts them on, pushing them into place. “Wow, I love being able to see. You bring your books?”

“Yep!” Conor pats his messenger bag. “The most valuable things I own, they’re worth more than my life, to be honest.” 

“Seriously.” Eamon agrees. “Capitalism is a strange, strange system. You can put your books on the coffee table.” Eamon gestures to the table in front of the television. “I’m just going to grab mine from my bedroom, I’ll be right back.” Eamon walks carefully down the hallway and ducks through a door. Conor takes his books out of his bag, setting them down on the table. It’s incredible, so much money for just so little. Eamon pads back down the hallway, his own books in his arms. “What do you think of the apartment?”

“It’s really nice.” Conor looks around again. The whole place just seems kind of… Cozy, lived in, even. Not in a bad way, it’s just that he can tell that Eamon lives there. The bag of coffee grounds sitting on the small counter and the three separate mugs sitting next to it, the small house plant by the window, the bookshelf that seems to have DVD cases in between the real books. “Like, really, it’s so nice. It’s very you.”

“Thanks.” Eamon chuckles, sitting down on his sofa and putting two of his books between him and the arm. Eamon pats the cushion next to him. “Sit down and stay awhile, Conor, you already know that I don’t bite.” Conor rolls his eyes, but sits down on Eamon’s couch, which, now that he thinks about it, is more like a love seat.

Conor takes one of his books from the coffee table and flips it open, scanning the words on it and really trying to absorb them. He definitely needs to understand this material. They lapse into silence, the only noises in the apartment are Eamon’s quick page flips and Conor’s more slow ones. It’s like that for maybe ten minutes before Eamon breaks the spell.

“I’m sorry, do you mind if I put something on as background noise?” Eamon asks and Conor shakes his head, not looking up from his book. Conor can see Eamon from the corner of his eye as the other clicks buttons on the remote and pulls his legs up under him. A few seconds later, noise starts to feel the apartment, voices that Conor knows he should recognize, but he can’t place them until he glances up.

“The X-Files, really?” Conor asks, smiling widely because this is such an Eamon thing. Eamon ducks his head down, obviously blushing. “You’re such a stereotypical space nerd.”

“Hey, I just like The X-Files, okay? Leave me alone, gosh.” Eamon huffs, obviously joking and Conor chuckles as he goes back to reading.

Conor looks over at Eamon some point late, he’s not sure how much time has passed, but it’s been at least forty pages and he thinks that maybe the episode has changed because now Scully and Mulder are talking about vampires. Eamon’s book lays forgotten in his lap, his eyes now fixed on the television screen.

“So much for studying.” Conor closes his book and stretches his arms above his head. Eamon looks at him, disapproval easily read on his face. “What? I’m just going to take a short break, I’ve been reading for long enough. Plus, this is your chance to get me super invested in The X-Files again.”

“Again?” Eamon echoes and Conor nods.

“This used to be my show as a kid, honestly.” Conor admits. “So, come on, get me caught up on the plot.”

“I’m not… This one is weird, they’re telling it backwards. There’s this vampire and…” Eamon trails off, shaking his head. “Just start watching, honestly, you’ll be as well informed as I am.”

Studying pretty much goes out the window after that in turn for watching The X-Files and Eamon trying to explain to Conor the lore behind each episode and it’s glaringly obvious that Eamon has seen all of them more than once. 

Eamon does order them a pizza though, but the only thing that changes is the position of Conor’s books because Conor puts them on the floor so they don’t somehow get pizza grease on them. 

And then the pizza is gone and it’s almost midnight and Conor doesn’t understand how it got this late, but apparently it did.

“Do you just want to spend the night here?” Eamon offers, biting his lip. “I mean, it’s my fault you stayed out this late and I can loan you some clothes to sleep in, if you want.”

“I’ll text Darren.” Conor agrees, pulling his phone from his pocket and unlocking it.

“Why?” Eamon asks, confused.

“We room together?” Conor responds with a statement that’s more of a question. “I thought you knew that, I thought that was obvious!”

“Well, not to me!” Eamon defends himself. “I’ve never been to your dorm!”

“Eh, whatever, it’s no big deal.” Conor brushes it off, sending Darren a quick message. “We roomed together our first year and then requested it our second year. Can you believe that we actually used to not like each other?”

“You guys like each other?” Eamon asks, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “No, no, I’m kidding, you two are such good friends, it’s obvious. Come on, I’ll get you those clothes.” Eamon stands, stretching before leading Conor into the room he saw Eamon go into earlier to get his books.

And, wow, if Conor thought that the rest of the apartment said Eamon, his bedroom practically screams it. Eamon has a poster above his bed with “I WANT TO BELIEVE” written in block letters over a shaky picture of a UFO, there are glow in the dark stars stuck to the ceiling in the shape of what Conor doubts to be anything less than a completely accurate depiction of the Milky Way, Eamon’s blanket has a ghost on it. His sheets don’t, though, which is kind of strange because ghosts are usually associated with sheets, aren’t they?

Eamon tosses a shirt and a pair of sweatpants at Conor, who barely manages to catch them. He unfolds the shirt in his hands, looking at the design before looking up at Eamon and turning the shirt around.

“Really?” Conor asks, tilting his head. “Was this really necessary? I know you have normal t-shirts and you have to give me one that says ‘Junior Cryptozoologist’?”

“What do you mean?” Eamon furrows his eyebrows. “I think is a perfect shirt for you, as you are, you know, a junior cryptozoologist.”

“Wait up a second, I’m still a junior? So you’re, what, four times my senior?” Conor questions and he’s only half joking at this point.

“Shut up.” Eamon rolls his eyes as he closes the drawer on his armoire. “But yes, I am much more qualified, skilled, and knowledgeable than you are, so that makes me a few times your senior.” Eamon walks over and ruffles Conor’s hair in an affectionate gesture.

It’s… It’s honestly kind of a strange thing for Eamon to do, even if every single thing about Eamon is strange. Conor was, precisely, in no way prepared for that. Eamon didn’t initiate contact, he just didn’t. Well, he might do it with aliens, but he didn’t do it with people.

“Conor, you with me?” Eamon snaps in front of Conor’s face. Conor blinks, then nods, because yes, of course he is. “Okay, good, now take this pillow and blanket,” Eamon shoves both items into Conor’s hands, “and go change your clothes in the bathroom and then you can either sleep in my bed or sleep on the sofa.”

“I’ll- I’ll sleep on the sofa.” Conor decides, quickly, he doesn’t want to put Eamon out of his own bed in his own apartment when he hadn’t even planned on sleeping here. 

Conor walks by Eamon’s room after he’s changed into the sweatpants and shirt which is just a little short on him and he’s convinced that whenever he walks, it shows his stomach. But he peers into Eamon’s room, barely pushing open the already cracked door. A tiny sliver of light spills into the room and Conor can just make out Eamon, under at least three blankets and fast asleep. The stars on his ceiling are glowing brightly and they look pretty accurately placed to Conor, even if Conor doesn’t have the positions of the stars in the Milky Way memorized. Eamon probably does though, that nerd, he’s too smart for his own good. 

Conor closes the door and creeps quietly into the living room, turning the top light off and settling down on the sofa, which really isn’t all that uncomfortable. He falls asleep thinking of the boy sleeping in the room over from him. 

He wakes up to the smell of coffee and he groans, dragging the back of his hand over his eyes in an attempt to wipe the sleep away. Conor blinks and for a split second, he doesn’t know where he is, and then he hears Eamon’s voice.

“You’re finally up.” Eamon says and Conor sits up, looking at Eamon who is standing in the middle of his small kitchen. “It’s seven already.” It takes Conor in his sleep deprived state a few seconds that Eamon is holding two cups of coffee and not two flower pots. 

“Seven? I took you for the type of person to sleep until, like, twelve or something.” Conor sits up fully and reaches across the back of the sofa and takes one of the coffees as Eamon steps forward. “How’d you sleep?”

“Fine.” Eamon answers, sipping his own coffee. “Until you rolled over on the remote in your sleep and turned the TV on and somehow got to The Golden Girls and turned the volume way up, so I woke up at three a.m. to ‘thank you for being a friend’ being screamed from my living room.”

“I’m so sorry.” Conor laughs, not at Eamon’s plight, but at the sheer absurdity of it. And also the fact that it woke Eamon up, but not him. “That must have been dreadful.”

“Oh, it was.” Eamon’s voice is completely flat and Conor can’t remember if Eamon always sounds like he’s bored to death and speaks completely in monotone or if he’s trying to make a joke or if his voice just sounds like this when he wakes up. It could be any of the options and Conor would not be surprised. “And then I think you started trying to talk to me in your sleep. You opened your eyes just a little and said, albeit it was a little slurred, but were asleep. You told me that somebody was pretty, a girl named Amy.”

“I don’t know any Amy’s.” Conor thinks about it for a second, and then he realizes. He doesn’t know an Amy, but he knows an Eamon and a very pretty Eamon at that. Oh, fuck, he’s glad Eamon hasn’t figured it out. “Still, just sleep rambling, no real meaning behind it.” Conor sets his near empty mug on the coffee table and stands. “I should go, I think, I told Darren I’d be there early in the morning, and he worries so, you know.” of course, this was a bald faced lie, but Conor counted it as quite acceptable under the circumstances of realizing he has a huge crush on one of his best friends. 

“Sure.” Eamon says easily and Conor feels a pang of guilt in his chest for lying. “You might want to change though, just so you don’t look like you’re doing the walk of shame. Not that there’s anything wrong with sleeping with somebody, or that anyone should be ashamed about it, they shouldn’t be, but because of- I should stop now.”

“It’s alright.” Conor chuckles. “I’ll just put my jeans back on. Keeping this shirt, though.”

“I was meaning to give it to you anyway.” Eamon reminds him. “But thanks for coming over. Granted, you’re going to have to study some stuff on your own now because we didn’t really get anything done, but it was fun.”

Conor unlocks the door to his dorm and shuts it behind him a good twenty minutes after leaving Eamon’s apartment. Darren groans in his bed, pulling his pillow over his head.

“Wake up, Darren.” Conor takes the few steps necessary and flops down on the bed next to his friend. Conor buries his head in the sheets. “Darren, I need you, wake up. Darren. Darren!”

“I’m up!” Darren says, suddenly, loudly, he takes the pillow away from his face and Conor looks up from the sheets. “What the fuck do you want, Conor?”

“Everything’s horrible.” Conor groans, hitting Darren’s arm lightly with his own. Darren just rolls his eyes, he got used to Conor’s exaggeration the first year they roomed together.

“Specifically?” Darren prompts. Conor rolls onto his side to face him. 

“I was at Eamon’s and in his bedroom and he had a stupid ‘I want to believe’ poster above his bed and it was so dumb and I wanted to kiss him.” Conor says this much too quickly, all in one breath, words rolling into other words. 

“So?” Darren blinks. “Doesn’t sound like that big of a deal, I’d kiss him.”

“You’d kiss anybody.” Conor points out and Darren nods and shrugs at the same time. “But that’s not it. I slept on the sofa and apparently I turned on The Golden Girls really loudly in my sleep and it woke him up and he came in to turn it off and in my sleep I told him that he was very pretty.” Darren covers his mouth to keep from laughing. “But he didn’t understand and he thinks I said that a girl called Amy is pretty.”

“Strange, but not unexpected.” Darren admits. Conor tilts his head to the side, questioning. “I mean, c’mon, we’ve both met Eamon. What are the chances of him thinking that someone fancies him? Pretty damn low.”

“You’re not wrong.” Conor agrees, Eamon has a tendency of not being able to accept compliments. “What should I do, though? Because I think I do fancy him.”

“I don’t know, go, like, pin him to a wall and make out.” Darren suggests and Conor squawks, indignant. “What? You should know by now not to come to me for relationship advice! I’m not good at them! But really, just tell him how you feel, it’ll only get weirder if you don’t.”

“Weirder than me telling him that he’s pretty in my sleep, sure, like that’s possible.” Conor groans again, closing his eyes and tilting his head back. 

“You know I’m right.” Darren is completely sure that Conor does know, Conor is not an irrational person. Usually. 

“I do.” Conor nods. “But I’m sure as fuck not going to bring this up to Eamon. If I don’t talk about it, nothing will happen! Nothing at all!”

“You’re right.” Darren agrees, nodding. “Nothing will happen. Nothing bad, but nothing good either. If he does have feelings for you, well… We both know him well enough to know that he’d never talk to you about it first.”

“God damn it, Darren, stop being so right all the time.” Conor groans, letting his head flop back against the sheets. “Like, just stop, please, give me a chance. At least one.”

“You’ve got one now. Tell Eamon you like him or love him or whatever, I don’t care, just don’t make it weird and make sure you don’t hurt each other. I’m going back to sleep.” Darren rolls back over, turning his back on Conor. Conor just huffs, half laugh and half sigh, and curls up against Darren’s back, fully intent on sleeping, he didn’t get enough last night anyway, he was too busy thinking about Eamon. Conor cuts that train of thought off before it even leaves the station because thinking about Eamon is the exact reason he didn’t get any sleep last night. 

Eamon is in his own apartment, face pressed up against his counter, snoring lightly. His coffee cup sits beside him, quickly growing cold. 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah!! i've been working on this for a while, y'all, and i finally decided to just make this chaptered so i could at least get some feed back on it. there's at least one more chapter, but it might be a little bit before i can post it, sorry!! but thank you for reading, i hope you enjoyed! you can find me on tumblr @ realaristocrat.tumblr.com


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